Existential-Psychoanalytic Reflections on Belief and Being

Brent Potter is a psychoanalyst and author known for his work at the intersection of psychology, philosophy, and faith. With over three decades of clinical experience, his writing explores the depths of human suffering, healing, and meaning through accessible yet profound existential and psychoanalytic inquiry. Potter is recognized for pioneering theological psychoanalysis, integrating existential-phenomenological inquiry with Christian and psychoanalytic traditions.

• 1. The Ashes of Meaning 2. Fragmented Foundations 3. Introduction: The Destructive Horizon of the Psyche 4. Bion’s Concept of Linking and Its Attack 5. The Collapse of the Modern Self 6. The Return of the Sacred in Ruin s 7. Memory, Myth, and Mourning 8. Winnicott, the True Self, and the Sacred Holding 9. Trauma and the Problem of the Psyche 10. Jung, the Shadow, and the Recovery of Depth 11. Bion, Eigen, and the Language of the Unspeakable 12. Tolkien and the Recovery of the Imaginal 13. The Path through Wreckage: Faith as a Form of Knowing 14. The Ethical Horizon of Ruin: Love, Responsibility, and the Other 15. The Silence between Worlds: When God, the Analyst, and the Self Withdraw 16. Despair as Threshold: Suicidality, Refusal, and the Cry for Meaning 17. The Return of the Symbol: Image, Memory, and the Recovery of the Soul 18. A Vocation from the Ashes: Becoming in a Time without Direction 19. Faith in Action: Toward a Ruined Ethics of Presence 20. The Way through the Ruins: Living Faithfully without Arrival 21. On the Nature of Evil in the Modern Soul 22. Trauma and the Eclipse of Meaning 23. The Lost Art of Lament 24. A Phenomenology of Anger 25. Healing through the Other: Levinas, Love, and the Face 26. The Sacred in the Secular: Finding God beyond the Walls 27. Language, Silence, and the Unspoken: The Limits of Speech and the Birth of Meaning 28. Time, Eternity, and the Slow Work of the Soul 29. The Hidden Wholeness: Fragmentation, Integration, and the Desire for Unity 30. Faith and the Fractured World: Bearing Witness in the Age of Collapse 31. The Analyst and the Altar: Toward a Theology of Depth 32. The Last Word Is Not the End: Toward a Hope beyond the Frame 33. Case Study: Hope’s Orphan 34. Clinical-Theological Commentary: Hope in the Abyss 35. Theodicy and the Shattered Psyche 36. The Human Condition: On Suffering, Meaning, and the Refusal of Despair 37. Conclusion: Notes on Tenderness 38. Where We Might Go: Themes and Hopes for Human Growth and Presence